An earthquake centered off the coast of Maine rattled the region Monday, causing light to moderate shaking in the state, as well as in parts of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/earthquakes/earthquake-maine-coast-rattles-new-england-rcna189415
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The emergence of #DeepSeek's free assistant has placed big doubts over the US market's AI-driven rally of the past two years.
https://news.sky.com/story/bluesky-13297788
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The World Health Organization has begun cost-cutting measures in preparation for a US withdrawal next year, according to reporting by Reuters.
On his first day in office, President Trumpsigned an executive order to withdraw the USfrom the United Nation's health agency. The country was a founding member of the WHO in 1948 and has since been a key member of the organization, which has 193 other member states. The executive order cited Trump's long-standing complaints about the agency's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, dues payments, and alleged protection of China as the reasons for the withdrawal.
In a statement on Tuesday, the WHO said it "regrets" the announcement and hopes the US will reconsider.
"WHO plays a crucial role in protecting the health and security of the world’s people, including Americans, by addressing the root causes of disease, building stronger health systems, and detecting, preventing and responding to health emergencies, including disease outbreaks, often in dangerous places where others cannot go," the statement reads. "For over seven decades, WHO and the USA have saved countless lives and protected Americans and all people from health threats. Together, we ended smallpox, and together we have brought polio to the brink of eradication. American institutions have contributed to and benefited from membership in WHO."
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/01/who-starts-cutting-costs-as-us-withdrawal-date-set-for-january-2026/?utm_social-type=owned
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Russia has been warming at more than twice the global average since 1976, with 2024 marking the hottest year ever recorded globally.
Winter temperatures in Russia have risen by an average of 3 degrees Celsius over the past half-century, a leading climate expert told state media on Monday.
“It’s a little more in the Arctic and a little less in the south of Russia,” Alexei Kokorin, a climate expert at the Nature and People Foundation, told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. Kokorin has worked with organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Moscow provided a stark example, with temperatures hitting 3.5 degrees Celsius (38.3 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday morning — breaking a more than century-old daily record. Meanwhile, 2024 saw the warmest temperatures recorded in 170 years along Lake Baikal, where ice cover had yet to form as of mid-January.
Scientists warn that the human-induced climate crisis raises the risk of harvest failures, forced migration, mass extinction of species and ecosystem collapse.
Russia is already grappling with more frequent droughts, floods, heatwaves and the rapid thawing of permafrost across its diverse climatic zones, which range from subtropical to Arctic
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/01/27/russia-sees-rapid-3-c-winter-temperature-increase-over-past-50-years-a87760
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RFK jr. plans to immediately go after NIH drug development for cancer and infectious diseases.
Will require it to take “a break” for 8 years.
https://www.threads.net/@fridaghitis/post/DCbqkfeRVoZ
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A group led by the Department of Neurosurgery, Brain Research Institute, Niigata University succeeded in the diagnosis of leptomeningeal disease in diffuse midline gliomas by detecting H3K27M-mutant droplets from circulating tumor DNA of cerebrospinal fluid taken from these patients.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250127/Early-detection-of-tumor-spread-improves-treatment-outcomes.aspx
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This could be "Peak Trump"
If you only listened to the Trump administration’s pronouncements
or only read the deer-in-the-headlights accounts provided by assorted legacy journalists,
you might conclude that the new administration has already built up an irresistible head of steam.
❌Given Trump’s monarchical pretensions, he’d undoubtedly like us all to think he is unbound by limits and that resistance is futile.
❇️That is not the case, however, and we should not mistake Trump’s bombastic return and far-reaching early initiatives for unstoppable momentum.
On the contrary, we are more likely to look back on this period as the highwater mark of Trumpian hubris.
Making lavish promises is easy; delivering positive results is a whole lot harder.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/27/this-could-be-peak-trump/
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Trump promised voters he would act like a dictator on day one; and he honored that promise, in spades.
🔥Trump tried to nullify the Constitution with an executive order directing agencies to no longer honor the 14th Amendment’s declaration of #birthright #citizenship.
🔥Trump closed the week late on Friday by daring Congress to stem his corruption. He attempted to #fire more than a dozen independent #inspectors #general (IG) without providing Congress with the required 30 day notice or details on cause for dismissal.
❇️The courts, responding to an appeal from multiple secretaries of state, fulfilled their role on Thursday.
Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, appointed by President Reagan, was unequivocal in his dismissal of that executive order:
✅“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is. This is a #blatantly #unconstitutional order… I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.”
https://themoderatevoice.com/dictator-on-day-one-trump-goes-after-birthright-citizenship-and-independent-inspectors-general/
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On Friday night, Donald Trump fired at least 15 independent inspectors general in a late-night massacre that appeared to have been illegal.
Yet since then, that story has only gotten worse.
First, Trump subsequently defended the purge by calling it
“very standard,” which is clearly an effort to #normalize #lawlessness.
Second, some Republicans quickly signaled that they will be just fine with this, confirming once again that he will be #largely #unbound in his second term.
https://newrepublic.com/article/190705/transcript-trumps-late-night-purge-suddenly-becomes-bigger-scandal
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The release of a less capital-intensive artificial intelligence model from China’s #DeepSeek sent a chill through the U.S. stock market Monday,
initiating a massive selloff underscoring the fragile backdrop behind the record market.
KEY FACTS
U.S. stocks got walloped Monday: The S&P 500 fell about 2% at 9:30 a.m. EST market open, and the tech-heavy #Nasdaq sank 3.5%, heading toward its worst percentage loss since Dec. 18 and third-worst day of the last two years.
Domestic leaders in AI headlined the stinging losses, as #Microsoft dropped 4% and #Tesla slipped 2%, while semiconductor chip architect #Nvidia dove 12% and other big chip stocks like #Broadcom and #Taiwan #Semiconductor Manufacturing Company fell more than 10% apiece.
The selloff stems from weekend panic over last week’s release from the relatively unknown Chinese firm DeepSeek of its competitive generative AI model rivaling #OpenAI, the American firm backed by Microsoft and Nvidia, and its viral chatbot #ChatGPT, with DeepSeek notably running at a fraction of the cost of U.S.-based rivals.
As for why the DeepSeek news is so concerning for U.S. equities, JPMorgan analyst Sandeep Deshpande questioned in a note to clients how DeepSeek’s low-cost success “is posing thoughts to investors that the AI investment cycle may be over-hyped and a more efficient future is possible.”
And more broadly, the idea of a rival undercutting the largely U.S.-based generative AI revolution throws a wrench in investors’ historic confidence in American stocks, as the S&P trades at levels compared to companies’ revenues and profits comparable to the dot-com #bubble, meaning investors are ponying up more to get a slice of stateside equities.
Referring to the “magnificent seven” set of trillion-dollar U.S. companies including Nvidia and Tesla accounting for much of the 2020s bull market, Yardeni Research founder Ed Yardeni noted a “competitive threat to their magnificence has emerged from China.”
CRUCIAL QUOTE
DeepSeek is “bad news” for American tech behemoths with “plans to dominate the AI market with their expensive AI services,” cautioned Yardeni.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/27/deepseek-panic-heres-why-tech-stocks-are-getting-crushed-as-nasdaq-paces-to-worst-day-of-2025/
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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-what-north-america-can-learn-from-the-greatest-transportation-system/
https://bsky.app/profile/taras-grescoe.com/post/3lgq443aygs2r
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I was at a conference in Los Angeles a few years ago where the primary topic of conversation was how states should address the hundreds of thousands of rape kits that have been shelved for decades, without any investigation.
After one of the breakout sessions, a survivor of rape approached and asked me:
Is rape actually a crime?
My answer: It’s not a given in America, or other parts of the world.
In the U.S., rape is our least reported major felony, and our least successfully prosecuted.
Only 4% of reported rape cases ever see the inside of a court room, and only a small portion of those result in a conviction.
It’s one of the things that drove me to write a book about sexual violence in America,
where rape and sexual assault are not treated as brutal crimes,
but as a wearying dance of he said/she said and fervent denials where victim’s voices are largely disregarded.
Rape is the only thing that’s both a weapon of war and offered up for a sure-fire laugh at a comedy club.
When rape is framed by accused perpetrators as either a “misunderstanding” or an “outright lie,” their assertions are often enough for most people to nod their heads in agreement.
As such, rape and sexual abuse are not taken seriously by many of our most important institutions.
It is not by chance that the victims of this violent felony are mostly women, children and individuals from marginalized populations
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2025/01/23/sexual-assault-donald-trump-pete-hegseth-michelle-bowdler
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Scala del Bovolo and Palazzo Contarini di San Paternian
The Palace was born as a “fontego” house having an evident late gothic taste. In fact the first body of the building dates back to 1300, and it has been chosen by the noble Contarini of the San Paternian branch as family residence owing to the strategic location occupied by the building, equally distant from Rialto – place of commerce – and from San Marco – centre of the Venetian political power.
https://www.gioiellinascostidivenezia.it/en/scala-contarini-del-bovolo/
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A rebel militia backed by Rwanda has announced the capture of the city of Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a major victory for the group and one of the most significant escalations in the conflict between the two countries in years.
The militia, known as M23, briefly occupied Goma once before, in 2012, then was defeated and lay dormant for almost a decade. Now it has come roaring back, aiming to occupy the region for the long term and exploit its valuable rare minerals, according to United Nations experts.
This time, M23 appears to be in a stronger position to keep hold of Goma, a city made up mainly of people who left their homes in terror and will now have to live under the rule of one of the armed groups they fled.
A spokesman for M23 announced the “liberation of the city of Goma” in a post on X, saying Congolese military personnel had to hand over their arms to the U.N. and assemble in a stadium before 3 a.m. There was no confirmation that had been completed yet, though, and there were scattered reports of gunfire in the city into Monday morning
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/world/africa/rebels-capture-goma-congo.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
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X was a major vehicle of the disinformation that fomented the anti-refugee and Islamophobic violence which exploded in our cities last summer and Musk has defended the rioters
– baselessly claiming that civil war is “inevitable” in the UK because of its tolerance towards migrants and different religious backgrounds
– and questioning why the far-right activist who did much to whip up the hate, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’) is in prison (he was convicted under contempt of court laws last year).
Now, Musk seeks to institutionalise his threat to our multicultural society and its rule of law by attempting to extend his funding directly to a political party.
Reform UK’s Leader Nigel Farage recently met with Musk and, according to the Financial Times, its treasurer Nick Candy said that Musk is among several billionaires ready to raise more funds than “any other political party” to create “political disruption like we have never seen before” in Britain.
Farage’s old friend, Steve Bannon – fresh out of federal prison – concurs.
Though he has ideological disagreements with Musk about immigration,
Bannon recently declared that “money and information are the twin tactical nukes of modern politics”
and celebrated the fact that Musk “can deploy both at an unprecedented scale”.
“There’s not a centrist left-wing government in Europe that will be able to withstand that onslaught”, Bannon recently told Bloomberg.
As the co-founder of Cambridge Analytica, Bannon knows what he is talking about -- He was there at the beginning of this dark chapter of disinformation,
recruiting British conservatives to the value of big data and online campaigning as far back as 2013 at a conference in Cambridge.
And the Brexit connections keep on giving.
According to the Daily Mail, Musk is being advised on his UK targeting by none other than Dominic Cummings, the former chief advisor to Boris Johnson,
who has for long evinced an admiration of tech ‘disruption’
and who, as campaign director of Vote Leave, used AggregateIQ to target voters with Islamophobic messages during the EU Referendum
– just as Farage’s Leave.EU campaign did,
boosted by RT and the Russian Embassy.
‘It is not just Elon,” the Mail claims from a source, “Dom is in constant contact with major Silicon Valley figures, who are becoming increasingly anti-woke”.
On his blog, Cummings himself has confessed that “something approaching [Carole] Cadwalladr’s worst nightmare
— that she thought happened in 2016 but did not
— is now technically feasible:
effective automated personalised communication at scale.”
The facts of history are now hard to hide and deny.
There has been a decade-long war against ‘one person, one vote’,
and the concept of a transparent media to inform our citizenry.
If we are ever to protect our democracies from this synergy of autocracy and tech, we will have to unravel these alliances of money and information and their traffic of hatred and falsehood
https://bylinetimes.com/2025/01/25/how-russian-information-warfare-primed-the-world-for-the-tech-autocracy-of-trump-and-musk/
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A "linear park" that could circle downtown Salt Lake City within the next decade has taken another step toward reality.
Members of the Salt Lake City Council voted this week to release a little over $3.1 million in previously allocated funds for more advanced planning and to develop construction documents for Salt Lake City's Green Loop's "civic campus" section in Central City, following a request from planners behind the project.
The section would include Washington Square and Library Square to provide a possible blueprint for the rest of the project as planning inches closer to construction.
"The civic campus and downtown have the greatest green space needs in the city," said Blake Thomas, senior adviser on real estate and capital projects for the Salt Lake City Mayor's Office during a presentation on Tuesday.
https://www.ksl.com/article/51236970
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Coffee and Flowers Could Cost Americans More in a Colombian Trade War
Colombia is a relatively minor trading partner to the United States, but some industries are much more exposed than others.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/us/politics/colombia-tariffs-trump-exports.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
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Two prominent Republican senators have split with President Trump over his decisionto sever government security for former officials who are in Iran’s crosshairs.
Last week, Trump, 78, cut off funding for security for former Secretary of State Mike #Pompeo, ex-National Security Adviser John #Bolton and others.
Sens. #Lindsey #Graham of South Carolina and #Tom #Cotton of Arkansas, both outspoken GOP backers of Trump, are now encouraging the president to reevaluate that move.
“If people are going to work for the president now on Iran or China or North Korea or the Mexican drug cartels,
they might hesitate to do so”
because of the security withdrawal, Cotton warned
https://nypost.com/2025/01/26/us-news/tom-cotton-and-lindsey-graham-break-with-trump-on-nixing-security-for-john-bolton-mike-pompeo/
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Worst of SoCal rainstorm set to hit Sunday and Monday.
Forecasters said there is now a 10% to 20% chance of significant flash flooding and debris flow capable of damaging roads and homes in the most vulnerable recently burned areas,
namely, the areas of the Palisades and Franklin fires around Pacific Palisades and Malibu,
the Eaton fire around Altadena and Pasadena,
the Hughes fire around Lake Castaic,
and the Bridge fire in the Angeles National Forest north of Glendora.
If the low pressure system wobbles a bit west toward the water, it will pick up more moisture and result in higher rainfall totals,
while a more inland route to the east will mean less rain.
And if the storm ends up being a little slower than expected, it could sit over one area and prolong rainfall there, or result in heavier rainfall across the board.
“These patterns tend to be a little more unpredictable in terms of you really don’t know until it arrives what it’s going to end up doing,”.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-26/worst-of-socal-rain-storm-set-to-hit-sunday-monday-what-you-need-to-know
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Trump defends ousting at least 15 independent inspectors general in late-night purge
Despite what Donald Trump says, there is nothing "standard" about this weekend's mass firing of inspectors general.
It is unprecedented and, without advance notice to Congress, illegal.
IGs are independent watchdogs who safeguard against waste, fraud and abuse.
This will be bad for the country.
-- @noahbookbinder@bsky.app
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/24/trump-fire-inspectors-general-federal-agencies/
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